Friday Links | August 24, 2012

Somali runner Samia Yusuf Omar, who competed in the 2008 Olympics for her country, has drowned off the coast of Italy earlier this year. According to an earlier profile by Al Jazeera, Samia had been looking for a trainer in Ethiopia to compete at the London Olympics, but had met a lot of obstacles and resistance. Italian newspapers suggest that she was trying to get to Europe and to find a trainer there, so she could compete at the Olympics. May she be granted with eternal peace.

Hundreds of women and children flocked to hospitals in Chennai, India, after a rumour spreaded that two women had lost their limbs after applying mehendi via a text message that went viral, and turned out to be, not surprisingly, a hoax. Mehendi is applied on the hands and/or feet of women during festive occasions, such as the Eid.

Journalist and author Fariba Nawa profiles her friend Roya Hamid, an Afghan artist, who died earlier this year due to complications surrounding childbirth. She was in her 30s.

Controversial Egyptian tv channel Maria TV has been on air for over a month now, tackling diverse topics such as infidelity and beauty, but still many Egyptians find the channel offensive, but for different reasons.

A Canadian Muslim woman has been fired from her job, after she started to wear hijab to work. Even though, she took the hijab off during work hours, as it was said to her that the head scarf was not part of the uniform, she still got dismissed a mere two weeks later.